A Look At Brian Engblom: Part Two

Winnipeg's Brian Engblom was on three Stanley Cup winning Montreal Canadiens teams in the late 1970s.

Picking up from last week’s story, here is Part Two of Brian Engblom talking about his hockey career. Enjoy!

I started off by spending two full seasons in the AHL with their affiliate Nova Scotia Voyageurs. I remember my first training camp in Montreal being crazy. We must have had 70 players at camp, so they put us into teams and we played a round-robin tournament.

I drove to Montreal from Winnipeg for the camp and this was well before cell phones. I think I was supposed to be there on a Thursday, but they called right after I left and said I didn’t have to come until the Saturday. I didn’t know this so I arrived in Montreal early and went to go check in at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, but there was no reservation. They had to make a couple of calls because I was the first person there, like two days early. I sat around for two days and I hadn’t been on the ice for a week when we hit the ice for the first scrimmage. I was losing my mind. I have no wind; I have no nothing. And I’m playing against the likes of Guy Lafleur and Steve Shutt. So after two or three days passed, I was the first cut and they told me to get in the car and keep driving to Halifax.

So, in Nova Scotia I learned how to play pro hockey under Al MacNeil who is the best coach I ever had. He taught me the pro game and we won the Calder Cup both years I was there. And the second year I won the Eddie Shore Award as the league’s top defenseman. Montreal was dominant then. It was the start of their four Stanley Cup’s in a row and we won two Calder Cup’s at the same time, so we were a pretty stacked organization, to say the least.